The Trinity of Physics, Christianity, and Life

Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. […] The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.[1]

Can it be just a coincidence that within natural sciences we understand our universe with such a magnificent clarity and precision? “The Word,” or in Greek: ‘The Logos,’ which “was in the beginning”,[2] is more than a theological statement about Jesus, but a declaration of rationality and reason. Talking about the ‘laws of nature,’ we necessarily give credence to this ‘Logos,’ the logical structure of nature. Goedel’s incompleteness theorems suggest that everyone has to start with some unprovable statements in order to talk sense about anything. As an example, an axiom taken by every serious scientist is that nature is understandable. One may call it faith in the existence and consistency of some fundamental principles which are accessible by our minds. As Einstein pointed out:

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.[3]

Over the last few years, I gradually became more and more convinced by Christianity. Throughout my spiritual journey I have found physics to be a natural source of inspiration, encouraging me to look deeper. I came to see that modern physics challenges us to think beyond just the layer of beautiful and elegant mathematics, and compels us to pursue a deeper truth.

Physical Cosmology, Genesis and Fundamental Principles

The first person to propose the cosmological model known today as the ‘Big Bang Theory’ was both a Catholic priest and a physicist. After being ordained a priest, Fr. Georges Lemaitre studied astronomy at Cambridge University, worked at the Harvard College Observatory, and received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT. He solved the Einstein equations and estimated the expansion rate of the universe, now known as the historically misnamed ‘Hubble constant.’ He even suggested the accelerating expansion of the universe.[4] Several decades later the accelerating expansion was indeed discovered by the research groups of S. Perlmutter, B. Schmidt and A. Riess who were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2011.

According to the modern cosmological model, around 14 billion years ago almost all of the energy density of our universe was concentrated in electromagnetic radiation, commonly known as ‘light’. Although the concept of ‘light’ in the bible should not be confused with the concept of ‘light’ in physics, the statement ‘in the beginning there was light’ can be related to physical cosmology. Our universe developed from a hot dense state filled with light. Accordingly, physical cosmology seems to indicate that our universe is not a meaningless cycle but rather has an arrow of time that proceeds forward. Despite an ongoing debate on the ‘beginning’ of classical space-time in various theoretical cosmological models[5] [6] [7], a beginning seems more plausible given all the current cosmological data. Regardless, in my opinion, the arguable beginning of the universe is not an important spiritual inspiration from physics.

Rather as I see it, what points more decisively towards God is the temporal evolution of our universe and our ability to understand the universe. First, we discovered that our universe is neither chaotic (in the sense that it contains some regular laws) nor static, but that it is ordered and has well-defined phases during its evolution. Second, as mentioned in the introduction, our understanding of nature assumes the existence of objective principles beyond nature. The prominent atheist and cosmologist Sean M. Carroll says: “If and when cosmologists develop a successful scientific understanding of the origin of the universe, we will be left with a picture in which there is no place for God to act.”[8] Let us assume that we arrive at such an understanding. On the contrary, I think that in this case there will be an even more credible place for God. Though in possession of the scientific understanding of the origin of the universe, we would still be left with the open metaphysical question: ‘What is the origin of this understanding?’ Although the term ‘understanding’ is not easy to define, we could say that a scientific understanding means a mathematical description which is supported by the observational data. But as mentioned previously, mathematics cannot be proved consistent. The incompleteness theorems indicate that scientific knowledge is not enough for a complete description of reality.[9] If one day our scientific knowledge proves to successfully describe the origin of our universe, it will be a strong indication of the presence of fundamental principles beyond the scientific method. These principles would necessarily underline the consistency of our understanding and knowledge of nature. Although there are prominent faithful scholars like John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest and honored particle physics professor at Cambridge University, some physicists tend to be agnostics or atheists. Though I fully respect and appreciate the truth-seeking agnostic, for the reasons given above, among others, I have come to think that scientific atheism is self-contradictory. As C. S. Lewis writes: “Even to think and to act in the natural world we have to assume something beyond it and even assume that we partly belong to that something.”[10]

As I wrestled with questions of origin and Christianity I found myself asking—can modern cosmology be reconciled with Genesis, and if so, how? First, we have to acknowledge that when we want to understand a text, there is always a trinitarian unity consisting of the text itself, the subtext and the context. The text is what is literally written, the subtext is the purpose and intention of the author, and the context relates to the author as well as his historical or environmental surroundings. Only within this trinity can we fully understand the meaning of a text. If one reads Genesis only as the text itself, on the surface one could find apparent contradictions. For example, in Genesis 1 we read that on the fifth day God created animals and on the sixth day He created man. But in Genesis 2 God created man before He “formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky.” Here, it is important to recognize the subtext and the context of Genesis.[11] During the time when Genesis was written, many civilizations had a cyclical view of time. Because the day and night and all the seasons repeat themselves over and over again, one natural conclusion is to think of life as an endless wheel of repetitions. In this perspective, the meaning and uniqueness of man’s life is lost. Genesis gave the Israelites another perspective: there is an arrow of time, a fundamental reason and an underlying purpose. This meaning and completeness of the universe is symbolized by the number seven and the structure described in creation. A similar pattern is found in modern cosmology which indicates the existence of an ‘arrow of time’ as well as the temporal evolution of our universe. In addition to that, Genesis tells us that humans are made in God’s image and with a capability to know Him. Hence, it is no surprise to the Christian that science is so successful in gaining a thorough understanding of nature.

Our physical understanding of the universe is rooted in the theory of Einstein. His theory of relativity, which gave birth to physical cosmology, brought us another interesting insight into nature. Sometimes Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity is misinterpreted as implying that ‘everything is relative’, when ironically, the theory could be called the ‘Theory of the Absoluteness of Light.’ The two main postulates of Einstein’s theory are: 1) the value of the speed of light in free space is the same in all inertial reference frames, and 2) the laws of physics are identical in all inertial reference frames. Poetically we may say: the light is our absolute reference and the law is the same for everyone. In religious terminology this would be called ‘righteousness’. Conclusively the absoluteness of light in Einstein’s theory points towards the existence of fundamental principles.

Quantum Physics Shines New Light on Reality

By looking at quantum physics we can find other interesting principles manifested in nature. Quantum Mechanics began with new understandings of light. Surprisingly, we discovered that light is both a particle and a wave. How can something be a particle and a wave at the same time? Is it not a contradiction? A helpful analogy could be to ask: can something be rectangular and circular at the same time? At first, it may seem contradictory, but we simply have to think in a new dimension. A cylinder is rectangular from one perspective and circular from the other. The analogous procedure can be done in quantum physics. To describe this wave-particle duality—the quantum nature of light—we need to increase our ‘dimension’ of reasoning and understanding. The tool for doing precisely this is the mathematical formalism developed for the description of quantum phenomena. As Werner Heisenberg pointed out, “in consequence of empirical evidence, not only the content of our thinking changes, but also the structure of thinking.”[12]

I find it remarkable that a similar way of thinking is required in theology. Similar to the duality of light, the picture of God requires both duality and trinity. Properly understood it is not a contradiction that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. And it is not a contradiction that God is one in three persons. To quote C. S. Lewis:

On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.[13]

Another interesting inspiration from quantum physics is the suggestion that reality is formed by observation. The outcome of the experiment is not independent of the observer. A ‘mystery of measurement’ exists where the so-called wave function collapses and a new reality is formed by observing it. As Hans-Peter Duerr (a follower of Heisenberg) said:

Reality reveals itself more as a potentiality, as a not yet sallied, in some sense undecided ‘as-well-as’, only as a ‘may-be’ possibility for the familiar reality which reflects itself in a object-like manifestation subjected to the ‘either-or’- logic.[14]

Reality is formed by the interaction of the observer with the quantum nature of matter. This relationship-woven nature of physical reality we also find in the Christian picture of God. “God is Love”[15] means nothing unless God is manifested in a relationship. As St. Augustine realized, this is a powerful witness to the trinity: “Wherever there is love, there is a trinity: a lover, a beloved and a fountain of love.”[16]

Quantum Field Theory and the Music of the Love of God

Let us move on to the most fundamental physical description of reality so far—the Quantum Field Theory. Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his explanation of the photoelectric effect with his theorized light quanta, later to be called ‘photons’. However, in classical electrodynamics, light is a manifestation of a field. A puzzle that troubled Einstein until the end of his life was the proper reconciliation of light appearing as both a photon and coming from a field. Early quantum mechanics lacked the quantization of fields. It was a semi-classical approach now referred to as the ‘first quantization’. The quantization of fields—the ‘second quantization’—was developed by a number of theorists during the following decades. Finally, physicists arrived at quantum electrodynamics in which the quanta of light emerge from the quantization of the electromagnetic field. This astonishing achievement was honored by the Nobel Prize in 1965 (S. Tomonga, J. Schwinger and R. Feynman) and set the basis for modern particle physics.

Within the picture of quantum field theory, modern physics challenges us to question materialism. At the beginning of the 20th century, one might have thought that Democritus was right, that everything just seemed to consist of indivisible objects called atoms. But as modern physics shows us, Plato had a more suitable picture in which matter is not made up of indivisible objects isolated from the rest of the universe. Heisenberg recognized this in his talks about physics and philosophy even before the great success of particle physics in the second half of the 20th century. In fact, ‘particle’ physics is a misleading word. What we discovered in physics is that at the most fundamental level of our description of nature there is nothing like an isolated indivisible object separated from all the universe. Rather, particles are excitations of quantum fields!

A single electron cannot exist in full separation from the rest of the universe because it cannot exist without the electron quantum field. This quantum field is everywhere being present in the whole universe. Particles only appear to be indivisible and localized because of the laws of quantum fields. Their behavior emerges from quantum fields, just like the behavior of molecules emerges from the behavior of atoms. At the most fundamental level of matter lies the following symmetry: ‘U(1) cross SU(2) cross SU(3)’—this is the so-called ‘Standard Model of Particle Physics’ in brief. A theoretical particle physicist states at the most fundamental level that the symmetries of the electroweak and strong forces identify with the three mathematical groups. U(1), the unitary group of degree one, represents the electromagnetic interaction which can be unified with the weak force represented by the so-called special unitary group of degree two, SU(2). The strong force features the symmetry of the special unitary group of degree three, SU(3). The characteristic properties of the interactions are derived from these symmetry groups. For instance, from the U(1) symmetry we know that the quanta of the electromagnetic field have to be uncharged and massless, and that there is only one kind of quanta which we can call ‘photons’. Because the photons are massless and uncharged, the electromagnetic force has an infinite range. The weak and strong forces are not relevant on the scale of ‘everyday-life’ physics because they have ranges below or equal to a femtometer, the size of a nucleus. This fact can be derived from the properties of the SU(2) or SU(3) interactions. The electromagnetic and weak forces have proved to be unified into one interaction which we call the ‘electroweak force’. The unification of all the fundamental interactions, including gravity, remains a dream for every theoretical particle physicist. One such attempt is called string theory.

Shockingly, the fundamental blocks of matter are not made out of matter in the usual sense. And so again we find that our description of nature is closer to Plato’s worldview. As Heisenberg said:

I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.’

At the bottom of matter lies the symmetry, the mathematics or ‘geometric objects’ that Plato claimed back then. What we do not see with our eyes seems to be more ‘real’ than what we can ‘grasp’ with our hands. Abstract imagination is needed to embrace the roots of reality.

Imagining a quantum field as strings of musical instruments spanning the whole space-time, particles are then excitations of these strings. One could say that matter is the music of the eternal love of God to us humans. A symphony with both dramatic and joyful movements. Everyone of us represents a unique instrument. God provides us with the harmonies, and it is our decision whether we play dissonantly or consonantly with the harmonies He has given us.

Science and Religion as Duality of Truth

I have come to think that science and religion are complementary pictures of truth, answering the questions of ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ In science, we look for empirical evidence and provable facts, whether it pertains to history, biochemistry, or physics. Science is an interplay between man and nature and it is always bound to this method. We pose the question ‘How?’ to nature and we want to hear an answer which we can understand. Amazingly, we get these answers!

In physics, we construct theoretical models, perform an experiment and analyze the results. But that is not how we dare to approach some aspects of our life. How would you prove the love of your mother? Would you dare to ‘test’ it? Turn away from her and see whether she still comes back to you? Would you want to repeat this ‘experiment’ over and over again just as you do in the scientific method? This sounds odd and it is odd, because love in its complete picture is not measurable. A biochemist or neuroscientist could argue that in some way we could measure love by chemicals in our body. But this is very different from our experience of love which demands that we should resent such a complete mapping of love down to chemicals. Life offers us deeper questions than those of a pure description of natural phenomena. These are questions about meaning and purpose which can be summarized in the category of the question ‘Why?’ The fact that we can and want to ask these kinds of questions points towards a deep truth of human existence. Attempts to address the question ‘Why?’ are transcendent and force us to think about God.

C. S. Lewis, whose conversion from atheism to Christianity was influenced by G. K. Chesterton[18] and discussions with J. R. R. Tolkien, described a beautiful picture of two fundamentally different perspectives. He writes about ‘looking at’ versus ‘looking along’[19] which we may identify as the questions ‘how?’ and ‘why?’.

Looking at a penetrating light-beam in a dark toolshed is very different from looking along the light-beam when one is illuminated by the sun and can experience the light-beam. In science, we are looking at the universe to describe how it behaves from the outside perspective. Meaning and purpose can only be found by looking along the universe, taking the inside perspective. Meaning is an interior and not an exterior property. For instance, we find meaning in love by loving, i.e. by looking along love and not at love. What is the meaning of light? We cannot find it by simply looking at light because we would only find out how light behaves.

To reveal the purpose and meaning of light, we have to look along light, from the inside perspective of light to see its purpose in illumination. We have to face light with our hearts, let light illuminate us, let it shine along us. By letting light become part of ourselves, we access the meaning of light: it shines in the darkness so that we may find new understandings of everything.[20] The new knowledge and experience gained by looking along light becomes part of our identity and helps us to see the world in a more complete way.

Science is always bound to a method. In the above picture, it would be looking at the light-beam and identifying its path by the dust floating in it. But thinking about God requires us to go beyond such methods. This means to look along the lightbeam and experience the light-beam itself by recognizing the beauty of the illuminated and the sun, the source of the light. God, who is infinite Love, cannot be grasped in theories. Physics can give us inspirations for faith in God, but it cannot prove or disprove God’s existence. We are inspired by looking at the light-beam and want to know where it comes from by looking along it. The concept of faith features transcendency and goes beyond purely rational proofs or disproofs for the existence of God. We must not be fooled by purely reductionist reason because there never is an ending to the exploration of the Logos. We can never think to an end.

Why may it even be considered beautiful that one cannot prove God by empirical evidence, pure facts, or science? Because otherwise faith becomes impersonal and mechanical. You would then not need other people in order to have faith; you could go to the library, sit in a lonesome corner and just study about God’s existence. We would be almost like computers trying mechanically to resolve our beliefs. But faith is passed on by people. Faith has to be more than reasonable, faith is experienceable. Rational thinking is not enough to have faith. We have to open our hearts towards God to find and experience belief: as Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.”[21] The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber noticed: “All actual life is encounter.”[22] If all what was needed for faith is rationality, it would restrict faith to just an intellectual matter. But the way to the kingdom of God and eternal life is opened for everyone regardless of their rational capabilities. Jesus and faith in Him does not differentiate between people based on their academic achievements. Every person will be judged according to his or her capabilities. Just as one can do music without having a music degree, one can have faith without being a theologian. Every human being can follow God because man has the intuition to follow Him.

God is More Than the Logos

As a first step towards thinking beyond the question of ‘how’, we should recognize God as the ultimate intelligence and the fundamental truth, the ‘Logos.’ We can never fully understand and grasp the truth of the Logos. For His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways.[23] St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable hisjudgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!”[24] Like St. Paul, even groundbreaking scientists like Einstein have had to admit humility:

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.[25]

The epistemologist Karl Popper pointed out that we can never come to the full description of the laws of nature.[26] Even if we do reach it, we cannot know whether this description is complete. Instead, we evolve towards that goal by continuously creating and falsifying theories. And, as physics has shown us, this process is amazingly successful. We understand most of the ‘books in the huge library’!

Science provides us with a taste of the Logos. The answers to the question ‘how?’ seem to fit into a greater picture of reality. We can understand nature over many orders of magnitude, we can explore the first moments during the temporal evolution of our universe, we can predict to an astonishing precision the outcomes of our experiments with the smallest units of matter,[27] and we can describe all the interactions of visible matter on a profound and deep level. There are still many unknowns and puzzles such as the cosmological constant, dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry or the unification of all fundamental interactions. But already the achievements of today’s physics suggest that the human mind is capable of looking at nature from a perspective beyond the pure empirics. If our understanding of nature was solely rooted in pure empirical knowledge, we would not expect to match theories and models from different branches of empirics so consistently together. For example, by combining the laws of our universe on a scale of billions of light-years with the laws of the smallest building blocks of visible matter we arrive at the prediction of the cosmic microwave background radiation. We can even precisely quantify tiny temperature fluctuations in the spectrum of this radiation. And when we measure these fluctuations, we find outstanding agreement with theory. By varying the cosmological model parameters we can find almost all the essential properties of our universe. We can even deduce the abundance of chemical elements present in the early stars![28] Such astonishing understanding of the universe does not come from empirics alone. Theories which produce such fascinating agreement with reality are guided by empirics, but their root lies in our ability to think beyond empirics and comprehend reality in a more abstract, connected, elegant and beautiful way.

Therefore, in obtaining such beautiful and rational answers to the question ‘how?’, we should seriously consider that the answer to the question ‘why?’ is attainable. We Christians believe that the answer to the question ‘why?’ lies most deeply in the love of God. And because love is relational, this ultimately leads us to the question ‘who?’. Jesus Christ, the Logos, is the deepest and fullest expression of God’s love for us humans. God is much more than the Logos or rationality in our universe. God is Love, God is the Way, God is the Truth, God is the Life.[29] As in the analogy made before, in which matter is the music of the eternal love of God to us, physics studies the technical details of this music. But only through our relationship with God are we able to understand, listen and play with this symphony.[30]

We have to think about God through the trinity, combining the Logos which we access through our rationality, the Love which we access through our heart, and the Life which we access through our personal experience. This is the trinity of life between our thoughts, feelings and actions. The truth is not fully comprehensible but it is experienceable.

So what is truth? In Russian there are two different words for ‘truth’—‘prawda’ and ‘istina’. I believe that these two words articulate the two kinds of truth. We may argue about the first ‘truth’, we may doubt, question or falsify it, we may prove or disprove it by empirical evidence or facts. The opposite of it is a lie. The second ‘truth’ is personally subjective because it requires the alignment of our mind with our heart. This truth cannot be fully put into words, it has no opposite and goes beyond the true-false perspective. We can experience this truth but we cannot fully understand it. The famous Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache once said “Music is not beautiful, music is true.”[31] Love is true. Life is true. Jesus is true. Let us follow Him to play the greatest symphony of mankind.

And so as a physicist, as a Christian, and as a person— recognizing the complementary truth of the Logos, of the Love and of the Life—I invite you to pray and seek truth[32] with all your reason, all your heart and all of your personal experience. May our minds be strengthened to acknowledge what we cannot know, may our eyes be enlightened to see the unseen, may our ears be opened to listen to the music of God’s love. May God share with us His wisdom, His light and His truth, so that we may play the symphony of mankind within the harmonies of His will. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.

Vitaly studied physics at the Technical University of Munich and ETH Zurich with research internships at CERN and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Currently he is a visiting fellow at Harvard working on the electron electric dipole moment experiment which is affiliated with the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms. He was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church this past Easter.